


Friendship

by djdaddybek (llyn)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pining, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 05:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12675543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llyn/pseuds/djdaddybek
Summary: They trade instagrams. Not really, though. Otabek’s already following Yuri, the angels, and his rinkmates. He’s stalked Yuri from one frame to the next for three years.





	Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Otabek Altin Week prompt: Beka Bear

They trade instagrams. Not really, though. Otabek’s already following Yuri, the angels, and his rinkmates. He’s stalked Yuri from one frame to the next for three years. Easy to forget, as they sit together outside of the airport check-in, Yuri’s leg draped over Otabek’s thigh, that Otabek will get on a plane home– _Home?_  he thinks, the word is meaningless looking into those fairy green eyes–and once again he’ll be following Yuri that way. Following his posts and not the scent of his hair, not the way the line of him bends toward Otabek. Yuri can’t seem to help but crowd close to him. Otabek wants him, too. Wants him closer, still. But they’re out of time.  

“Will we keep in touch?” Otabek wonders out loud.

“Are you kidding?” Yuri had been leaning all his weight against Otabek’s shoulder, scrolling through his account picture by picture, making feline noises of interest, and–sometimes–low growls. “I’m gonna stalk you,” he says, sitting up with a stretch. Otabek can only watch his slender back arch for the last time in person, for now. Maybe it’s for the best he’ll just be watching, he thinks, eyes stuck on Yuri’s thin wrists where they cross above his head. On instagram you can’t touch.

Suddenly, Yuri snaps out of his lazy stretch to poke Otabek in the chest, “And I’m  _gonna_  be watching, Beka. So don’t piss me off. I’ve got a shitload of followers, and they’re all crazy.”

“What?” Otabek’s charmed but lost.

Yuri huffs. “I’m saying don’t let me catch you with another, um–” he stops. His ears turn red under his braids.

“Friend?” Otabek asks, just to tease.

Yuri shakes his hair, chin up, fighting his blush. “Yeah,” he says.

It doesn’t seem possible, it can’t be real, but Otabek reaches up to brush his thumb over Yuri’s soft cheek. Yuri turns his whole face toward his palm, nuzzling, then he looks at Otabek and says, “I don’t want to go home.” His eyes shine, his lip trembles, like there’s something Otabek can do about that.

Otabek can only think of one thing to do about that. He takes Yuri’s chin in his hand and kisses him. He closes his eyes. It’s not something you can feel online: lips, the tickle of tongues, the butterfly flutter of eyelashes, the smallest moan, then–

“Yuri!”

Yeah, it wasn’t gonna last long. Lilia glares. Brings the phone back to her ear, still glaring, hand on hip. Ah, well.

Yuri doesn’t say anything, just looks at Lilia like he’s confused about who, exactly, she is, then at Otabek, licking his lips, trying to taste it again. His cheeks are so pink. Otabek’s phone chimes: time to go.

“Here, Yuri,” he says, pushing the bear he’d caught after the free skate into Yuri’s hands. He unwinds the scarf from his neck and winds it around Yuri, instead. He’d keep giving him his possessions–digging in his carry-on for his journal because Yuri should have that, too–but Lilia shouts Yuri’s name again, his full name, and Yuri answers back in a string of profanity, and Otabek knows he’s just stalling for time, anyway. Yuri doesn’t need his journal. He should have it, though. No. He stands up. Yuri, too. He says, “Goodbye, Yura.”

“Bye, Beka, I–” but Yuri doesn’t say it, looking away and back, shy. He hugs his bear tight. He’s here and he’s real and, of all things, Otabek has no choice but to turn with his luggage and walk away.

He lands in Almaty under a storm cloud. Having stood beside him, how can he be alone now? Despondent, head resting against the window of the taxi, he scrolls instagram.

The first one he sees is a angel’s Yuri sighting at the airport. He watches him slip through the crowd, a blond blur the angels all try their best to catch. Then, back in time, it’s the Russians arrival at home–Yuri looking surly and sleep mussed, mobbed by fans at the airport, clutching his bear. Then he’s asleep on the plane, cheek pressed to the bear’s belly as Mila and Georgi ham in the foreground. Then he’s with Viktor at the terminal, arms crossed over his chest. Then the team going up and down endless escalators, Yuri sliding out of Georgi’s story and through Mila’s, then he’s caught for a moment backlit by a window, drinking sweet ice with the bear pinched in his elbow, eyes red, hood up, like he’s been crying. Then, standing in the same spot where Otabek left him, a selfie, kissing his bear.

“I love my new friend,” he writes beneath. “And the bear, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter @commandantllyn
> 
> or on tumblr at [djdaddybek](http://djdaddybek.tumblr.com)


End file.
